Today, most cellphone plans are divided into three services: texting, voice calls, and mobile data. The average consumer pays a separate fee for each of these three services, which all can add up to a very expensive mobile bill for both businesses and consumers. However, one ingenious method that could soon unify these three fees into one low price is to use LTE (News - Alert) networks to transmit all of these services as data.
Voice over LTE (VoLTE) phone services translate phone calls into efficient packets of data that cost less to transfer than traditional cellular signals do and even offer a generally higher voice quality. The end result, if implemented, would be better and cheaper mobile phone service for everyone.
VoLTE is based off of the same technology that runs VoIP phone networks, which use a network IP address to identify a user the same way a phone number would. According to Troy Wolverton of The Colombus Dispatch, VoLTE offers an upgrade to virtually every feature of today's mobile phones. Not only does VoLTE deliver higher voice quality on calls, but consolidating all calls onto a data plan would necessitate faster and more reliable data networks.
The ultimate result is better-sounding calls with more features and faster Web browsing, at a much lower costs. Telecommunications analyst Jeff Kagan states in the article that “[VoLTE is] the next generation for the wireless industry...It's better quality and better cost.” While mobile carriers are starting to transition to offering VoLTE plans, most are doing so at a slow rate. Verizon (News - Alert), AT&T and T-Mobile all started offering VoLTE services in the spring, but the older networks these companies use have trouble delivering voice and data simultaneously over one wireless radio band.
However, modern VoLTE technology has outpaced this obstacle, which is already supported by phones like the iPhone (News - Alert) 6. In short time, mobile carriers will be forced to offer VoLTE services as the technology becomes more accessible, since consumers will flock quickly to the providers that can offer cheaper and better phone service than their current solutions.
Edited by Alisen Downey